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“We’ll piece together whatever else we need to make it work,” he added. “Even a langue secrète follows patterns.”
This wasn’t going to work. Not a chance in hell would an incomplete spell do anything, but we had no other options until whoever had been opening portals found us. If they were even searching for us. So I sighed.
“I’ll try casting a portal spell. Stand back.”
As the men and Beverly moved away, I placed my hands over the spell circle and unleashed my magic, letting it roam free through my body and the world around me like dogs at a park. I spoke the incantation for a portal spell—it wasn’t in any language I recognized, but I had memorized it all the same. It came to me easily.
The purple flames of my magic ran along the interlocking circles of the spell, lit up the symbols, and… found it had nowhere to go when it hit the spots with missing runes. It swirled around and around like a sock in a washing machine, going nowhere, doing nothing.
I dropped my hands and pulled my magic back. “There are too many symbols missing.” If only I had bothered to memorize the relic as I had the spell. Stupid of me to think the device would always be there for me.
Or for my people in Free Jinx.
“You’ll figure it out,” Moe said behind me.
These men have been in love with me for an hour, and I was already going to disappoint them.
Ram crouched on the far side of the magic circle and pointed to a few spots, one at a time. “I can see where your magic is getting stuck. These five symbols are wrong, and something is missing in these three places. We can test different variations. It’ll take some time, but through trial and error—”
The whole room trembled and filled with a horrible creaking sound like wood breaking. The walls and ceiling of the bubble dimension rippled like water.
My heart leaped into my throat. “The world is about to pop.”
Chapter 16
Thebubbledimensionwaveredlike a bad signal on an old TV. It screamed and creaked and the ground kicked upward, tossing us and everything in the room into the air. My stomach rose into my throat.
“Wheee,” Moe said.
“Moe, no,” Elliot said, grasping Beverly to his chest to protect her as he landed on the ground.
Through it all, Ram and I guessed at symbols and replaced them in the circle by restoring the section of the burnt shag and reburning it. Every time I cast the portal spell, my magic spun and spun until I felt dizzy.
It might be the last thing I ever felt. The dimension was going to burst any moment and take us with it. If we had stayed in prison, we would have at least lived.
“This isn’t going to work!” I snapped at Ram. “I told you I couldn’t get us out of prison, but you only care about yourself.”
“So do you!” Ram snapped back. “Remember when we were still together? I didn’t even know there was a problem between us until you led an attack against me!”
Now that death was imminent, all the old bitterness was coming out. Well, if I was going to die, I was going to tell Ram what a jerkwad he was first.
“You should have noticed! I had stopped sleeping with you, but you were too up your own ass to care why.”
The world kicked us into the air as the floor undulated like a snake. I hit the ground with a painful jolt up my spine.
“I asked,” Ram growled as he rolled to his feet. “You lied to me. Some shit about no desire from antidepressants.”
I didn’t remember telling that lie, but I might have. “You would have turned on me if you knew I didn’t want you to murder my best friend!”
Ram winced, and I knew my words were true.
“So I turned on you first,” I said.
The floor heaved, and we flew into the air again. I threw my hands over my head to protect it from the ceiling. I landed with a thud.
“Stop arguing,” Jag ordered. “We’re going to die if you don’t figure something out!”
He was right. Ram and I were exactly what we were accusing each other of being: selfish bastards who didn’t think about those around them. Did I really want to die acting like the monster Ram thought I was?
